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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bcff549 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #60640 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60640) diff --git a/old/60640-h.zip b/old/60640-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 2186740..0000000 --- a/old/60640-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/60640-h/60640-h.htm b/old/60640-h/60640-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 260e826..0000000 --- a/old/60640-h/60640-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1273 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wind People, by Marion Zimmer Bradley. - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; } -.ph1 { font-size: large; margin: .83em auto; } - - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wind People, by Marion Zimmer Bradley - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: The Wind People - -Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley - -Release Date: November 7, 2019 [EBook #60640] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND PEOPLE *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="344" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>THE WIND PEOPLE</h1> - -<h2>BY MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY</h2> - -<p class="ph1"><i>Inhabited only by whispering winds,<br /> -Robin's World was a paradise for the<br /> -wrong two people—Eve and her son....</i></p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1959.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>It had been a long layover for the <i>Starholm's</i> crew, hunting heavy -elements for fuel—eight months, on an idyllic green paradise of a -planet; a soft, windy, whispering world, inhabited only by trees and -winds. But in the end it presented its own unique problem.</p> - -<p>Specifically, it presented Captain Merrihew with the problem of Robin, -male, father unknown, who had been born the day before, and a month -prematurely, to Dr. Helen Murray.</p> - -<p>Merrihew found her lying abed in the laboratory shelter, pale and calm, -with the child beside her.</p> - -<p>The little shelter, constructed roughly of green planks, looked out -on the clearing which the <i>Starholm</i> had used as a base of operations -during the layover; a beautiful place at the bottom of a wide valley, -in the curve of a broad, deep-flowing river. The crew, tired of being -shipbound, had built half a dozen such huts and shacks in these eight -months.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus.jpg" width="468" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Merrihew glared down at Helen. He snorted, "This is a fine situation. -You, of all the people in the whole damned crew—the ship's doctor! -It's—it's—" Inarticulate with rage, he fell back on a ridiculously -inadequate phrase. "It's—criminal carelessness!"</p> - -<p>"I know." Helen Murray, too young and far too lovely for a ship's -officer on a ten-year cruise, still looked weak and white, and her -voice was a gentle shadow of its crisp self. "I'm afraid four years in -space made me careless."</p> - -<p>Merrihew brooded, looking down at her. Something about ship-gravity -conditions, while not affecting potency, made conception impossible; no -child had ever been conceived in space and none ever would. On planet -layovers, the effect wore off very slowly; only after three months -aground had Dr. Murray started routine administration of anticeptin to -the twenty-two women of the crew, herself included. At that time she -had been still unaware that she herself was already carrying a child.</p> - -<p>Outside, the leafy forest whispered and rustled, and Merrihew knew -Helen had forgotten his existence again. The day-old child was tucked -up in one of her rolled coveralls at her side. To Merrihew, he looked -like a skinned monkey, but Helen's eyes smoldered as her hands moved -gently over the tiny round head.</p> - -<p>He stood and listened to the winds and said at random, "These shacks -will fall to pieces in another month. It doesn't matter, we'll have -taken off by then."</p> - -<p>Dr. Chao Lin came into the shack, an angular woman of thirty-five. She -said, "Company, Helen? Well, it's about time. Here, let me take Robin."</p> - -<p>Helen said in weak protest, "You're spoiling me, Lin."</p> - -<p>"It will do you good," Chao Lin returned. Merrihew, in a sudden surge -of fury and frustration, exploded, "Damn it, Lin, you're making it all -worse. He'll die when we go into overdrive, you know as well as I do!"</p> - -<p>Helen sat up, clutching Robin protectively. "Are you proposing to drown -him like a kitten?"</p> - -<p>"Helen, I'm not proposing anything. I'm stating a fact."</p> - -<p>"But it's not a fact. He won't die in overdrive because he won't be -aboard when we go into overdrive!"</p> - -<p>Merrihew looked at Lin helplessly, but his face softened. "Shall -we—put him to sleep and bury him here?"</p> - -<p>The woman's face turned white. "No!" she cried in passionate protest, -and Lin bent to disengage her frantic grip. "Helen, you'll hurt him. -Put him down. There."</p> - -<p>Merrihew looked down at her, troubled, and said, "We can't just abandon -him to die slowly, Helen—"</p> - -<p>"Who says I'm going to abandon him?"</p> - -<p>Merrihew asked slowly, "Are you planning to desert?" He added, after a -minute, "There's a chance he'll survive. After all, his very birth was -against all medical precedent. Maybe—"</p> - -<p>"Captain—" Helen sounded desperate. "Even drugged, no child under -ten has ever endured the shift into hyperspace drive. A newborn would -die in seconds." She clasped Robin to her again, and said, "It's the -only way—you have Lin for a doctor, Reynolds can handle my collateral -duties. This planet is uninhabited, the climate is mild, we couldn't -possibly starve." Her face, so gentle, was suddenly like rock. "Enter -my death in the log, if you want to."</p> - -<p>Merrihew looked from Helen to Lin, and said, "Helen, you're insane!"</p> - -<p>She said, "Even if I'm sane now, I wouldn't be long if I had to -abandon Robin." The wild note had died out of her voice, and she spoke -rationally, but inflexibly. "Captain Merrihew, to get me aboard the -<i>Starholm</i>, you will have to have me drugged or taken by force; I -promise you I won't go any other way. And if you do that—and if Robin -is left behind, or dies in overdrive—just so you will have my services -as a doctor—then I solemnly swear that I will kill myself at the first -opportunity."</p> - -<p>"My God," said Merrihew, "you <i>are</i> insane!"</p> - -<p>Helen gave a very tiny shrug. "Do you want a madwoman aboard?"</p> - -<p>Chao Lin said quietly, "Captain, I don't see any other way. We -would have had to arrange it that way if Helen had actually died in -childbirth. Of two unsatisfactory solutions, we must choose the least -harmful." And Merrihew knew that he had no real choice.</p> - -<p>"I still think you're both crazy," he blustered, but it was surrender, -and Helen knew it.</p> - -<p>Ten days after the <i>Starholm</i> took off, young Colin Reynolds, -technician, committed suicide by the messy procedure of slicing his -jugular artery, which—in zero gravity—distributed several quarts of -blood in big round globules all over his cabin. He left an incoherent -note.</p> - -<p>Merrihew put the note in the disposal and Chao Lin put the blood in the -ship's blood-bank for surgery, and they hushed it up as an accident; -but Merrihew had the unpleasant feeling that the layover on the green -and windy planet was going to become a legend, spread in whispers by -the crew. And it did, but that is another story.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Robin was two years old when he first heard the voices in the wind. He -pulled at his mother's arm and crooned softly, in imitation.</p> - -<p>"What is it, lovey?"</p> - -<p>"Pretty." He crooned again to the distant murmuring sound.</p> - -<p>Helen smiled vaguely and patted the round cheek. Robin, his infant -imagination suddenly distracted, said, "Hungry. Robin hungry. Berries."</p> - -<p>"Berries after you eat," Helen promised absently, and picked him up. -Robin tugged at her arm.</p> - -<p>"Mommy pretty, too!"</p> - -<p>She laughed, a rosy and smiling young Diana. She was happy on the -solitary planet; they lived quite comfortably in one of the larger -shacks, and only a little frown-line between her eyes bore witness -to the terror which had closed down on her in the first months, when -every new day had been some new struggle—against weakness, against -unfamiliar sounds, against loneliness and dread. Nights when she lay -wakeful, sweating with terror while the winds rose and fell again -and her imagination gave them voices, bleak days when she wandered -dazedly around the shack or stared moodily at Robin. There had -been moments—only fleeting, and penanced with hours of shame and -regret—when she thought that even the horror of losing Robin in those -first days would have been less than the horror of spending the rest -of her life alone here; when she had wondered why Merrihew had not -realized that she was unbalanced, and forced her to go with them ... by -now, Robin would have been only a moment's painful memory.</p> - -<p>Still not strong, knowing she had to be strong for Robin or he would -die as surely as if she had abandoned him, she had spent the first -months in a somnambulistic dream. Sometimes she had walked for days -at a time in that dream; she would wake to find food that she could -not remember gathering. Somehow, pervasive, the dream-voices had taken -over; the whispering winds had been full of voices and even hands.</p> - -<p>She had fallen ill and lain for days sick and delirious, and had -heard a voice which hardly seemed to be her own, saying that if she -died the wind voices would care for Robin ... and then the shock and -irrationality of that had startled her out of delirium, agonized and -trembling, and she pulled herself upright and cried out "No!"</p> - -<p>And the shimmer of eyes and voices had faded again into vague echoes, -until there was only the stir of sunlight on the leaves, and Robin, -chubby and naked, kicking in the sunlight, cooing with his hands -outstretched to the rustle of leaves and shadows.</p> - -<p>She had known, then, that she had to get well. She had never heard the -wind voices again, and her crisp, scientific mind rejected the fanciful -theory that if she only believed in the wind voices she would see their -forms and hear their words clearly. And she rejected them so thoroughly -that when she heard them speak she shut them away from her mind, and -after a time heard them no longer, except in restless dreams.</p> - -<p>By now she had accepted the isolation and the beauty of their world, -and begun to make a happy life for Robin.</p> - -<p>For lack of other occupation last summer—though the winter was -mild and there was no lack of fruits and roots even then—Helen had -patiently snared male and female of small animals like rabbits, and -now she had a pen of them. They provided a change of diet, and after -a few smelly unsuccessful experiments she had devised a way to supple -their fur pelts. She made no effort at gardening, though when Robin was -older she might try that. For the moment, it was enough that they were -healthy and safe and protected.</p> - -<p>... Robin was <i>listening</i> again. Helen bent her ear, sharpened by the -silence, but heard only the rustle of wind and leaves; saw only falling -brightness along a silvered tree-trunk.</p> - -<p>Wind? When there were no branches stirring?</p> - -<p>"Ridiculous," she said sharply, then snatched up the baby boy and -squeezed him before hoisting him astride her hip. "Mommy doesn't mean -<i>you</i>, Robin. Let's look for berries."</p> - -<p>But soon she realized that his head was tipped back and that he was -listening, again, to some sound she could not hear.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>On what she said was Robin's fifth birthday, Helen had made a special -bed for him in another room of the building. He missed the warmth of -Helen's body, and the comforting sound of her breathing; for Robin, -since birth, had been a wakeful child.</p> - -<p>Yet, on the first night alone, Robin felt curiously freed. He did -something he had never dared do before, for fear of waking Helen; he -slipped from his bed and stood in the doorway, looking into the forest.</p> - -<p>The forest was closer to the doorway now; Robin could fuzzily remember -when the clearing had been wider. Now, slowly, beyond the garden patch -which Helen kept cleared, the underbrush and saplings were growing -back, and even what Robin called "the burned place" was covered with -new sparse grass.</p> - -<p>Robin was accustomed to being alone, during the day—even in his first -year, Helen had had to leave him alone, securely fastened in the house, -or inside a little tight-fenced yard. But he was not used to being -alone at night.</p> - -<p>Far off in the forest, he could hear the whispers of the other people. -Helen said there were no other people, but Robin knew better, because -he could hear their voices on the wind, like fragments of the songs -Helen sang at bedtime. And sometimes he could almost see them in the -shadowy spots.</p> - -<p>Once when Helen had been sick, a long time ago, and Robin had run -helplessly from the fenced yard to the inside room and back again, -hungry and dirty and furious because Helen only slept on the bed with -her eyes closed, rousing up now and then to whimper like he did when -he fell down and skinned his knee, the winds and voices had come into -the very house; Robin had hazy memories of soothing voices, of hands -that touched him more softly than Helen's hands. But he could not quite -remember.</p> - -<p>Now that he could hear them so clearly, he would go and find the other -people. And then if Helen was sick again, there would be someone else -to play with him and look after him. He thought gleefully, <i>won't Helen -be surprised</i>, and darted off across the clearing.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Helen woke, roused not by a sound but by a silence. She no longer heard -Robin's soft breaths from the alcove, and after a moment she realized -something else:</p> - -<p>The winds were silent.</p> - -<p>Perhaps, she thought, a storm was coming. Some change in air pressure -could cause this stillness—but Robin? She tiptoed to the alcove; as -she had suspected, his bed was empty.</p> - -<p>Where could he be? In the clearing? With a storm coming? She slid her -feet into hand-made sandals and ran outside, her quivering call ringing -out through the silent forest:</p> - -<p>"Robin—oh, Robin!"</p> - -<p>Silence. And far away a little ominous whisper. And for the first -time, since that first frightening year of loneliness, she felt lost, -deserted in an alien world. She ran across the clearing, looking around -wildly, trying to decide which way he could have wandered. Into the -forest? What if he had strayed toward the river bank? There was a place -where the bank crumbled away, down toward the rapids—her throat closed -convulsively, and her call was almost a shriek:</p> - -<p>"Oh, Robin! Robin, darling! Robin!"</p> - -<p>She ran through the paths worn by their feet, hearing snatches of -rustle, winds and leaves suddenly vocal in the cold moonlight around -her. It was the first time since the spaceship left them that Helen had -ventured out into the night of their world. She called again, her voice -cracking in panic.</p> - -<p>"Ro-bin!"</p> - -<p>A sudden stray gleam revealed a glint of white, and a child stood in -the middle of the path. Helen gasped with relief and ran to snatch up -her son—then fell back in dismay. It was not Robin who stood there. -The child was naked, about a head shorter than Robin, and female.</p> - -<p>There was something curious about the bare and gleaming flesh, as if -she could see the child only in the full flush of the moonlight. A -round, almost expressionless face was surrounded by a mass of colorless -streaming hair, the exact color of the moonlight. Helen's audible gasp -startled her to a stop: she shut her eyes convulsively, and when she -opened them the path was black and empty and Robin was running down the -track toward her.</p> - -<p>Helen caught him up, with a strangled cry, and ran, clasping him to her -breast, back down the path to their shack. Inside, she barred the door -and laid Robin down in her own bed, and threw herself down shivering, -too shaken to speak, too shaken to scold him, curiously afraid to -question. I had a hallucination, she told herself, a hallucination, -another dream, a dream....</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A dream, like the other Dream. She dignified it to herself as The -Dream, because it was not like any other dream she had ever had. She -had dreamed it first before Robin's birth, and been ashamed to speak of -it to Chao Lin, fearing the common-sense skepticism of the older woman.</p> - -<p>On their tenth night on the green planet (the <i>Starholm</i> was a dim -recollection now) when Merrihew's scientists had been convinced that -the little world was safe, without wild beasts or diseases or savage -natives, the crew had requested permission to camp in the valley -clearing beside the river. Permission granted, they had gone apart in -couples almost as usual, and even those who had no enduring liaison at -the moment had found a partner for the night.</p> - -<p><i>It must have been that night....</i></p> - -<p>Colin Reynolds was two years younger than Helen, and their attachment, -enduring over a few months of shiptime, was based less on mutual -passion than a sort of boyish need in him, a sort of impersonal -feminine solicitude in Helen. All her affairs had been like that, -companionable, comfortable, but never passionate. Curiously enough, -Helen was a woman capable of passion, of great depths of devotion; but -no man had ever roused it and now no man ever would. Only Robin's birth -had touched her deeply-pent emotions.</p> - -<p>But that night, when Colin Reynolds was sleeping, Helen stayed -restlessly awake, hearing the unquiet stirring of wind on the leaves. -After a time she wandered down to the water's edge, staying a cautious -distance from the shore—for the cliff crumbled dangerously—and -stretched herself out to listen to the wind-voices. And after a time -she fell asleep, and had The Dream, which was to return to her again -and again.</p> - -<p>Helen thought of herself as a scientist, without room for fantasies, -and that was why she called it, fiercely, a dream; a dream born of some -undiagnosed conflict in her. Even to herself Helen would not recall it -in full.</p> - -<p>There had been a man, and to her it seemed that he was part of the -green and windy world, and he had found her sleeping by the river. Even -in her drowsy state, Helen had suspected that perhaps one of the other -crew members, like herself sleepless and drawn to the shining water, -had happened upon her there; such things were not impossible, manners -and mores being what they were among starship crews.</p> - -<p>But to her, half-dreaming, there had been some strangeness about him, -which prevented her from seeing him too clearly even in the brilliant -green moonlight. No dream and no man had ever seemed so living to her; -and it was her fierce rationalization of the dream which kept her -silent, months later, when she discovered (to her horror and secret -despair) that she was with child. She had felt that she would lose the -haze and secret delight of the dream, if she openly acknowledged that -Colin had fathered her child.</p> - -<p>But at first—in the cool green morning that followed—she had not been -at all sure it was a dream. Seeing only sunlight and leaves, she had -held back from speaking, not wanting ridicule; could she have asked -each man of the <i>Starholm</i>, Was it you who came to me last night? -Because if it was not, there are other men on this world, men who -cannot be clearly seen even by moonlight—</p> - -<p>Severely she reminded herself, Merrihew's men had pronounced the world -uninhabited, and uninhabited it must be. Five years later, hugging -her sleeping son close, Helen remembered the dream, examined the -content of her fantasy, and once again, shivering, repeated, "I had a -hallucination. It was only a dream. A dream, because I was alone...."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>When Robin was fourteen years old, Helen told him the story of his -birth, and of the ship.</p> - -<p>He was a tall, silent boy, strong and hardy but not talkative; he -heard the story almost in silence, and looked at Helen for a long time -in silence, afterward. He finally said in a whisper, "You could have -died—you gave up a lot for me, Helen, didn't you?" He knelt and took -her face in his hands. She smiled, and drew a little away from him.</p> - -<p>"Why are you looking at me like that, Robin?"</p> - -<p>The boy could not put instant words to his thoughts; emotions were not -in his vocabulary. Helen had taught him everything she knew, but she -had always concealed her feelings from her son. He asked at last, "Why -didn't my father stay with you?"</p> - -<p>"I don't suppose it entered his head," Helen said. "He was needed on -the ship. Losing me was bad enough."</p> - -<p>Robin said passionately, "I'd have stayed!"</p> - -<p>The woman found herself laughing. "Well—you did stay, Robin."</p> - -<p>He asked, "Am I like my father?"</p> - -<p>Helen looked gravely at her son, trying to see the half-forgotten -features of young Reynolds in the boy's face. No, Robin did not look -like Colin Reynolds, nor like Helen herself. She picked up his hand -in hers; despite his robust health, Robin never tanned; his skin was -pearly pale, so that in the green sunlight it blended into the forest -almost invisibly. His hand lay in Helen's palm like a shadow. She -said at last, "No, nothing like him. But under this sun, that's to be -expected."</p> - -<p>Robin said confidently, "I'm like the <i>other</i> people."</p> - -<p>"The ones on the ship? They—"</p> - -<p>"No," Robin interrupted, "you always said, when I was older you'd tell -me about the other people. I mean the other people <i>here</i>. The ones in -the woods. The ones you can't see."</p> - -<p>Helen stared at the boy in blank disbelief. "What do you mean? There -are no other people, just us." Then she recalled that every imaginative -child invents playmates. <i>Alone</i>, she thought, <i>Robin's always alone, -no other children, no wonder he's a little—strange.</i> She said, -quietly, "You dreamed it, Robin."</p> - -<p>The boy only stared at her, in bleak, blank alienation. "You mean," he -said, "you can't <i>hear</i> them either?" He got up and walked out of the -hut. Helen called, but he didn't turn back. She ran after him, catching -at his arm, stopping him almost by force. She whispered, "Robin, Robin, -tell me what you mean! There isn't anyone here. Once or twice I thought -I had seen—something, by moonlight, only it was a dream. Please, -Robin—please—"</p> - -<p>"If it's only a dream, why are you frightened?" Robin asked, through a -curious constriction in his throat. "If they've never hurt you—"</p> - -<p>No, they had never hurt her. Even if, in her long-ago dream, one of -them had come to her—<i>and the sons of God saw the daughters of men -that they were fair</i>—a scrap of memory from a vanished life on another -world sang in Helen's thoughts. She looked up at the pale, impatient -face of her son, and swallowed hard.</p> - -<p>Her voice was husky when she spoke.</p> - -<p>"Did I ever tell you about rationalization—when you want something to -be true so much that you can make it sound right to yourself?"</p> - -<p>"Couldn't that also happen to something you wanted <i>not</i> to be true?" -Robin retorted with a mutinous curl of his mouth.</p> - -<p>Helen would not let go his arm. She begged, "Robin—no, you'll only -waste your life and break your heart looking for something that doesn't -exist—"</p> - -<p>The boy looked down into her shaken face, and suddenly a new emotion -welled up in him and he dropped to his knees beside her and buried his -face against her breast. He whispered, "Helen, I'll never leave you, -I'll never do anything you don't want me to do, I don't want anyone but -you—"</p> - -<p>And for the first time in many years, Helen broke into wild and -uncontrollable crying, without knowing why she wept.</p> - -<p>Robin did not speak again of his quest in the forest. For many months -he was quiet and subdued, staying near the clearing, hovering near -Helen for days at a time, then disappearing into the forest at dusk. He -heard the winds numbly, deaf to their promise and their call.</p> - -<p>Helen too was quiet and withdrawn, feeling Robin's alienation through -his submissive mood. She found herself speaking to him sharply for -being always under foot; yet, on the rare days when he vanished into -the forest and did not return until after sunset, she felt a restless -unease that set her wandering the paths herself, not following him, but -simply uneasy unless she knew he was within call.</p> - -<p>Once, in the shadows just before sunset, she thought she saw a man -moving through the trees, and for an instant, as he turned toward her, -she saw that he was naked. She had seen him only for a second or two, -and after he had slipped between the shadows again, common sense told -her it was Robin. She was vaguely shocked and annoyed; she firmly -intended to speak to him, perhaps to scold him for running about naked -and slipping away like that; then, in a sort of remote embarrassment, -she fore-bore to mention it. But after that, she kept out of the forest.</p> - -<p>Robin had been vaguely aware of her surveillance and knew when it -ceased. But he did not give up his own pointless rambles, although -even to himself he no longer spoke of searching, or of any dreamlike -inhabitants of the woods. At times it still seemed that some shadow -concealed a half-seen form, and the distant murmur grew into a voice -that mocked him; a white arm, the shadow of a face, until he lifted his -head and stared straight at it.</p> - -<p>One evening toward twilight he saw a sudden shimmer in the trees, -and he stood, fixedly, as the stray glint resolved itself first into -a white face with shadowy eyes, then into a translucent flicker of -bare arms, and then into the form of a woman, arrested for an instant -with her hand on the bole of a tree. In the shadowy spot, filled only -with the last ray of a cloudy sunset, she was very clear; not cloudy -or unreal, but so distinct that he could see even a small smudge or -bramble-scratch on her shoulder, and a fallen leaf tangled in her -colorless hair. Robin, paralyzed, watched her pause, and turn, and -smile, and then she melted into the shadows.</p> - -<p>He stood with his heart pounding for a second after she had gone; then -whirled, bursting with the excitement of his discovery, and ran down -the path toward home. Suddenly he stopped short, the world tilting and -reeling, and fell on his face in a bed of dry leaves.</p> - -<p>He was still ignorant of the nature of the emotion in him. He felt only -intolerable misery and the conviction that he must never, never speak -to Helen of what he had seen or felt.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He lay there, his burning face pressed into the leaves, unaware of the -rising wind, the little flurry of blown leaves, the growing darkness -and distant thunder. At last an icy spatter of rain aroused him, and -cold, numbed, he made his way slowly homeward. Over his head the boughs -creaked woodenly, and Robin, under the driving whips of the rain, felt -their tumult only echoed his own voiceless agony.</p> - -<p>He was drenched by the time he pushed the door of the shack open, and -stumbled blindly toward the fire, only hoping that Helen would be -sleeping. But she started up from beside the hearth they had built -together last summer.</p> - -<p>"Robin?"</p> - -<p>Deathly weary, the boy snapped, "Who <i>else</i> would it be?"</p> - -<p>Helen didn't answer. She came to him, a small swift-moving figure in -the firelight, and drew him into the warmth. She said, almost humbly, -"I was afraid—the storm—Robin, you're all wet, come to the fire and -dry out."</p> - -<p>Robin yielded, his twitching nerves partly soothed by her voice. <i>How -tiny Helen is</i>, he thought, <i>and I can remember that she used to carry -me around on one arm. Now she hardly comes to my shoulder.</i> She brought -him food and he ate wolfishly, listening to the steady pouring rain, -uncomfortable under Helen's watching eyes. Before his own eyes there -was the clear memory of the woman in the wood, and so vivid was Robin's -imagination, heightened by loneliness and undiluted by any random -impressions, that it seemed to him Helen must see her too. And when she -came to stand beside him, the picture grew so keen in his thoughts that -he actually pulled himself free of her.</p> - -<p>The next day dawned gray and still, beaten with long needles of rain. -They stayed indoors by the smoldering fire; Robin, half sick and -feverish from his drenching, sprawled by the hearth too indolent to -move, watching Helen's comings and goings about the room; not realizing -why the sight of her slight, quick form against the gray light filled -him with such pain and melancholy.</p> - -<p>The storm lasted four days. Helen exhausted her household tasks and sat -restlessly thumbing through the few books she knew by heart—they had -allowed her to remove all her personal possessions, all the things she -had chosen on a forgotten and faraway Earth for a ten-year star-cruise. -For the first time in years, Helen was thinking again of the life, -the civilization she had thrown away, for Robin who had been a pink -scrap in the circle of her arm and now lay sullen on the hearth, not -speaking, aimlessly whittling a stick with the knife (found discarded -in a heap of rubbish from the <i>Starholm</i>) which was his dearest -possession. Helen felt slow horror closing in on her. <i>What world, -what heritage did I give him, in my madness? This world has driven us -both insane. Robin and I are both a little mad, by Earth's standards. -And when I die, and I will die first, what then?</i> At that moment Helen -would have given her life to believe in his old dream of strange people -in the wood.</p> - -<p>She flung her book restlessly away, and Robin, as if waiting for that -signal, sat upright and said almost eagerly, "Helen—"</p> - -<p>Grateful that he had broken the silence of days, she gave him an -encouraging smile.</p> - -<p>"I've been reading your books," he began, diffidently, "and I -read about the sun you came from. It's different from this one. -Suppose—suppose, if there were actually a kind of people here, and -something in this light, or in your eyes, made them invisible to you?"</p> - -<p>Helen said, "Have you been seeing them again?"</p> - -<p>He flinched at her ironical tone, and she asked, somewhat more gently, -"It's a theory, Robin, but it wouldn't explain, then, why <i>you</i> see -them."</p> - -<p>"Maybe I'm—more used to this light," he said gropingly. "—And anyway, -you said you thought you'd seen them and thought it was only a dream."</p> - -<p>Halfway between exasperation and a deep pity, Helen found herself -arguing, "If these other people of yours really exist, why haven't they -made themselves known in sixteen years?"</p> - -<p>The eagerness with which he answered was almost frightening. "I think -they only come out at night, they're what your book calls a primitive -civilization—" He spoke the words he had read, but never heard, with -an odd hesitation. "They're not really a civilization at all, I think, -they're like—part of the woods."</p> - -<p>"A forest people," Helen mused, impressed in spite of herself, "and -nocturnal. It's always moonlight or dusky when you see them—"</p> - -<p>"Then you <i>do</i> believe me—oh, Helen," Robin cried, and suddenly found -himself pouring out the story of what he had seen, in incoherent -words, concluding "—and by daylight I can hear them, but I can't see -them—Helen, Helen, you have to believe it now, you'll have to let me -try to find them and learn to talk to them—"</p> - -<p>Helen listened with a sinking heart. She knew they should not discuss -it now, when five days of enforced housebound proximity had set their -nerves and tempers on edge, but some unknown tension hurled her sharp -words at Robin. "You saw a woman, and I—a man. These things are only -dreams. Do I have to explain more to you?"</p> - -<p>Robin flung his knife sullenly aside. "You're so blind, so stubborn—"</p> - -<p>"I think you are feverish again." Helen rose to go.</p> - -<p>He said wrathfully, "You treat me like a child!"</p> - -<p>"Because you act like one, with your fairy tales of women in the -wind...."</p> - -<p>Suddenly Robin's agony overflowed and he caught at her, holding her -around the knees, clinging to her as he had not done since he was a -small child, his words stumbling and rushing over one another.</p> - -<p>"Helen, Helen darling, don't be angry with me," he begged, and caught -her in a blind embrace that pulled her off her feet. She had never -guessed how strong he was; but he seemed very like a little boy, and -she hugged him quickly as he began to cover her face with childish -kisses.</p> - -<p>"Don't cry, Robin, my baby, it's all right," she murmured, kneeling -close to him. Gradually the wildness of his passionate crying abated; -she touched his forehead with her cheek to see if it were heated with -fever, and he reached up and held her there. Helen let him lie against -her shoulder, feeling that perhaps after the violence of his outburst -he would fall asleep, and she was half asleep herself when a sudden -shock of realization darted through her; quickly she tried to free -herself from Robin's entangling arms.</p> - -<p>"Robin, let me go."</p> - -<p>He clung to her, not understanding. "Don't let go of me, Helen. -Darling, stay here beside me," he begged, and pressed a kiss into her -throat.</p> - -<p>Helen, her blood icing over, realized that unless she freed herself -very quickly now, she would be fighting against a strong, aroused young -man not clearly aware of what he was doing. She took refuge in the -sharp maternal note of ten years ago, almost vanished in the closer, -more equal companionship of the time between:</p> - -<p>"No, Robin. Stop it, at once, do you hear?"</p> - -<p>Automatically he let her go, and she rolled quickly away, out of his -reach, and got to her feet. Robin, too intelligent to be unaware of her -anger and too naive to know its cause, suddenly dropped his head and -wept, wholly unstrung. "Why are you angry?" he blurted out. "I was only -loving you."</p> - -<p>And at the phrase of the five-year-old child, Helen felt her throat -would burst with its ache. She managed to choke out, "I'm not angry, -Robin—we'll talk about this later, I promise—" and then, her own -control vanishing, turned and fled precipitately into the pouring rain.</p> - -<p>She plunged through the familiar woods for a long time, in a daze of -unthinking misery. She did not even fully realize that she was sobbing -and muttering aloud, "No, no, no, no—"</p> - -<p>She must have wandered for several hours. The rain had stopped and the -darkness was lifting before she began to grow calmer and to think more -clearly.</p> - -<p>She had been blind, not to foresee this day when Robin was a child; -only if her child had been a daughter could it have been avoided. -Or—she was shocked at the hysterical sound of her own laughter—if -Colin had stayed and they had raised a family like Adam and Eve!</p> - -<p>But what now? Robin was sixteen; she was not yet forty. Helen caught at -vanishing memories of society; taboos so deeply rooted that for Helen -they were instinctual and impregnable. Yet for Robin nothing existed -except this little patch of forest and Helen herself—the only person -in his world, more specifically at the moment the only woman in his -world. <i>So much</i>, she thought bitterly, <i>for instinct. But have I the -right to begin this all over again? Worse; have I the right to deny its -existence and when I die, leave Robin alone?</i></p> - -<p>She had stumbled and paused for breath, realizing that she had -wandered in circles and that she was at a familiar point on the river -bank which she had avoided for sixteen years. On the heels of this -realization she became aware that for only the second time in memory, -the winds were wholly stilled.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Her eyes, swollen with crying, ached as she tried to pierce the gloom -of the mist, lilac-tinted with the approaching sunrise, which hung -around the water. Through the dispersing mist she made out, dimly, the -form of a man.</p> - -<p>He was tall, and his pale skin shone with misty white colors. Helen sat -frozen, her mouth open, and for the space of several seconds he looked -down at her without moving. His eyes, dark splashes in the pale face, -had an air of infinite sadness and compassion, and she thought his lips -moved in speech, but she heard only a thin familiar rustle of wind.</p> - -<p>Behind him, mere flickers, she seemed to make out the ghosts of other -faces, tips of fingers of invisible hands, eyes, the outline of a -woman's breast, the curve of a child's foot. For a minute, in Helen's -weary numbed state, all her defenses went down and she thought: <i>Then -I'm not mad and it wasn't a dream and Robin isn't Reynolds' son at all. -His father was this—one of these—and they've been watching me and -Robin, Robin has seen them, he doesn't know he's one of them, but they -know. They know and I've kept Robin from them all these sixteen years.</i></p> - -<p>The man took two steps toward her, the translucent body shifting -to a dozen colors before her blurred eyes. His face had a curious -familiarity—<i>familiarity</i>—and in a sudden spasm of terror Helen -thought, "I'm going mad, it's Robin, <i>it's Robin</i>—"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>His hand was actually outstretched to touch her when her scream cut icy -lashes through the forest, stirring wild echoes in the wind-voices, and -she whirled and ran blindly toward the treacherous, crumbling bank. -Behind her came steps, a voice, a cry—Robin, the strange dryad-man, -she could not guess. The horror of incest, the son the father the lover -suddenly melting into one, overwhelmed her reeling brain and she fled -insanely to the brink. She felt a masculine hand actually gripping her -shoulder, she might have been pulled back even then, but she twisted -free blindly, shrieking, "No, Robin, no, no—" and flung herself down -the steep bank, to slip and hurl downward and whirl around in the -raging current to spinning oblivion and death....</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Many years later, Merrihew, grown old in the Space Service, falsified -a log entry to send his ship for a little while into the orbit of the -tiny green planet he had named Robin's World. The old buildings had -fallen into rotted timbers, and Merrihew quartered the little world for -two months from pole to pole but found nothing. Nothing but shadows and -whispers and the unending voices of the wind. Finally, he lifted his -ship and went away.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Wind People, by Marion Zimmer Bradley - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND PEOPLE *** - -***** This file should be named 60640-h.htm or 60640-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/6/4/60640/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: The Wind People - -Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley - -Release Date: November 7, 2019 [EBook #60640] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND PEOPLE *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - THE WIND PEOPLE - - BY MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY - - _Inhabited only by whispering winds, - Robin's World was a paradise for the - wrong two people--Eve and her son...._ - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1959. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -It had been a long layover for the _Starholm's_ crew, hunting heavy -elements for fuel--eight months, on an idyllic green paradise of a -planet; a soft, windy, whispering world, inhabited only by trees and -winds. But in the end it presented its own unique problem. - -Specifically, it presented Captain Merrihew with the problem of Robin, -male, father unknown, who had been born the day before, and a month -prematurely, to Dr. Helen Murray. - -Merrihew found her lying abed in the laboratory shelter, pale and calm, -with the child beside her. - -The little shelter, constructed roughly of green planks, looked out -on the clearing which the _Starholm_ had used as a base of operations -during the layover; a beautiful place at the bottom of a wide valley, -in the curve of a broad, deep-flowing river. The crew, tired of being -shipbound, had built half a dozen such huts and shacks in these eight -months. - -Merrihew glared down at Helen. He snorted, "This is a fine situation. -You, of all the people in the whole damned crew--the ship's doctor! -It's--it's--" Inarticulate with rage, he fell back on a ridiculously -inadequate phrase. "It's--criminal carelessness!" - -"I know." Helen Murray, too young and far too lovely for a ship's -officer on a ten-year cruise, still looked weak and white, and her -voice was a gentle shadow of its crisp self. "I'm afraid four years in -space made me careless." - -Merrihew brooded, looking down at her. Something about ship-gravity -conditions, while not affecting potency, made conception impossible; no -child had ever been conceived in space and none ever would. On planet -layovers, the effect wore off very slowly; only after three months -aground had Dr. Murray started routine administration of anticeptin to -the twenty-two women of the crew, herself included. At that time she -had been still unaware that she herself was already carrying a child. - -Outside, the leafy forest whispered and rustled, and Merrihew knew -Helen had forgotten his existence again. The day-old child was tucked -up in one of her rolled coveralls at her side. To Merrihew, he looked -like a skinned monkey, but Helen's eyes smoldered as her hands moved -gently over the tiny round head. - -He stood and listened to the winds and said at random, "These shacks -will fall to pieces in another month. It doesn't matter, we'll have -taken off by then." - -Dr. Chao Lin came into the shack, an angular woman of thirty-five. She -said, "Company, Helen? Well, it's about time. Here, let me take Robin." - -Helen said in weak protest, "You're spoiling me, Lin." - -"It will do you good," Chao Lin returned. Merrihew, in a sudden surge -of fury and frustration, exploded, "Damn it, Lin, you're making it all -worse. He'll die when we go into overdrive, you know as well as I do!" - -Helen sat up, clutching Robin protectively. "Are you proposing to drown -him like a kitten?" - -"Helen, I'm not proposing anything. I'm stating a fact." - -"But it's not a fact. He won't die in overdrive because he won't be -aboard when we go into overdrive!" - -Merrihew looked at Lin helplessly, but his face softened. "Shall -we--put him to sleep and bury him here?" - -The woman's face turned white. "No!" she cried in passionate protest, -and Lin bent to disengage her frantic grip. "Helen, you'll hurt him. -Put him down. There." - -Merrihew looked down at her, troubled, and said, "We can't just abandon -him to die slowly, Helen--" - -"Who says I'm going to abandon him?" - -Merrihew asked slowly, "Are you planning to desert?" He added, after a -minute, "There's a chance he'll survive. After all, his very birth was -against all medical precedent. Maybe--" - -"Captain--" Helen sounded desperate. "Even drugged, no child under -ten has ever endured the shift into hyperspace drive. A newborn would -die in seconds." She clasped Robin to her again, and said, "It's the -only way--you have Lin for a doctor, Reynolds can handle my collateral -duties. This planet is uninhabited, the climate is mild, we couldn't -possibly starve." Her face, so gentle, was suddenly like rock. "Enter -my death in the log, if you want to." - -Merrihew looked from Helen to Lin, and said, "Helen, you're insane!" - -She said, "Even if I'm sane now, I wouldn't be long if I had to -abandon Robin." The wild note had died out of her voice, and she spoke -rationally, but inflexibly. "Captain Merrihew, to get me aboard the -_Starholm_, you will have to have me drugged or taken by force; I -promise you I won't go any other way. And if you do that--and if Robin -is left behind, or dies in overdrive--just so you will have my services -as a doctor--then I solemnly swear that I will kill myself at the first -opportunity." - -"My God," said Merrihew, "you _are_ insane!" - -Helen gave a very tiny shrug. "Do you want a madwoman aboard?" - -Chao Lin said quietly, "Captain, I don't see any other way. We -would have had to arrange it that way if Helen had actually died in -childbirth. Of two unsatisfactory solutions, we must choose the least -harmful." And Merrihew knew that he had no real choice. - -"I still think you're both crazy," he blustered, but it was surrender, -and Helen knew it. - -Ten days after the _Starholm_ took off, young Colin Reynolds, -technician, committed suicide by the messy procedure of slicing his -jugular artery, which--in zero gravity--distributed several quarts of -blood in big round globules all over his cabin. He left an incoherent -note. - -Merrihew put the note in the disposal and Chao Lin put the blood in the -ship's blood-bank for surgery, and they hushed it up as an accident; -but Merrihew had the unpleasant feeling that the layover on the green -and windy planet was going to become a legend, spread in whispers by -the crew. And it did, but that is another story. - - * * * * * - -Robin was two years old when he first heard the voices in the wind. He -pulled at his mother's arm and crooned softly, in imitation. - -"What is it, lovey?" - -"Pretty." He crooned again to the distant murmuring sound. - -Helen smiled vaguely and patted the round cheek. Robin, his infant -imagination suddenly distracted, said, "Hungry. Robin hungry. Berries." - -"Berries after you eat," Helen promised absently, and picked him up. -Robin tugged at her arm. - -"Mommy pretty, too!" - -She laughed, a rosy and smiling young Diana. She was happy on the -solitary planet; they lived quite comfortably in one of the larger -shacks, and only a little frown-line between her eyes bore witness -to the terror which had closed down on her in the first months, when -every new day had been some new struggle--against weakness, against -unfamiliar sounds, against loneliness and dread. Nights when she lay -wakeful, sweating with terror while the winds rose and fell again -and her imagination gave them voices, bleak days when she wandered -dazedly around the shack or stared moodily at Robin. There had -been moments--only fleeting, and penanced with hours of shame and -regret--when she thought that even the horror of losing Robin in those -first days would have been less than the horror of spending the rest -of her life alone here; when she had wondered why Merrihew had not -realized that she was unbalanced, and forced her to go with them ... by -now, Robin would have been only a moment's painful memory. - -Still not strong, knowing she had to be strong for Robin or he would -die as surely as if she had abandoned him, she had spent the first -months in a somnambulistic dream. Sometimes she had walked for days -at a time in that dream; she would wake to find food that she could -not remember gathering. Somehow, pervasive, the dream-voices had taken -over; the whispering winds had been full of voices and even hands. - -She had fallen ill and lain for days sick and delirious, and had -heard a voice which hardly seemed to be her own, saying that if she -died the wind voices would care for Robin ... and then the shock and -irrationality of that had startled her out of delirium, agonized and -trembling, and she pulled herself upright and cried out "No!" - -And the shimmer of eyes and voices had faded again into vague echoes, -until there was only the stir of sunlight on the leaves, and Robin, -chubby and naked, kicking in the sunlight, cooing with his hands -outstretched to the rustle of leaves and shadows. - -She had known, then, that she had to get well. She had never heard the -wind voices again, and her crisp, scientific mind rejected the fanciful -theory that if she only believed in the wind voices she would see their -forms and hear their words clearly. And she rejected them so thoroughly -that when she heard them speak she shut them away from her mind, and -after a time heard them no longer, except in restless dreams. - -By now she had accepted the isolation and the beauty of their world, -and begun to make a happy life for Robin. - -For lack of other occupation last summer--though the winter was -mild and there was no lack of fruits and roots even then--Helen had -patiently snared male and female of small animals like rabbits, and -now she had a pen of them. They provided a change of diet, and after -a few smelly unsuccessful experiments she had devised a way to supple -their fur pelts. She made no effort at gardening, though when Robin was -older she might try that. For the moment, it was enough that they were -healthy and safe and protected. - -... Robin was _listening_ again. Helen bent her ear, sharpened by the -silence, but heard only the rustle of wind and leaves; saw only falling -brightness along a silvered tree-trunk. - -Wind? When there were no branches stirring? - -"Ridiculous," she said sharply, then snatched up the baby boy and -squeezed him before hoisting him astride her hip. "Mommy doesn't mean -_you_, Robin. Let's look for berries." - -But soon she realized that his head was tipped back and that he was -listening, again, to some sound she could not hear. - - * * * * * - -On what she said was Robin's fifth birthday, Helen had made a special -bed for him in another room of the building. He missed the warmth of -Helen's body, and the comforting sound of her breathing; for Robin, -since birth, had been a wakeful child. - -Yet, on the first night alone, Robin felt curiously freed. He did -something he had never dared do before, for fear of waking Helen; he -slipped from his bed and stood in the doorway, looking into the forest. - -The forest was closer to the doorway now; Robin could fuzzily remember -when the clearing had been wider. Now, slowly, beyond the garden patch -which Helen kept cleared, the underbrush and saplings were growing -back, and even what Robin called "the burned place" was covered with -new sparse grass. - -Robin was accustomed to being alone, during the day--even in his first -year, Helen had had to leave him alone, securely fastened in the house, -or inside a little tight-fenced yard. But he was not used to being -alone at night. - -Far off in the forest, he could hear the whispers of the other people. -Helen said there were no other people, but Robin knew better, because -he could hear their voices on the wind, like fragments of the songs -Helen sang at bedtime. And sometimes he could almost see them in the -shadowy spots. - -Once when Helen had been sick, a long time ago, and Robin had run -helplessly from the fenced yard to the inside room and back again, -hungry and dirty and furious because Helen only slept on the bed with -her eyes closed, rousing up now and then to whimper like he did when -he fell down and skinned his knee, the winds and voices had come into -the very house; Robin had hazy memories of soothing voices, of hands -that touched him more softly than Helen's hands. But he could not quite -remember. - -Now that he could hear them so clearly, he would go and find the other -people. And then if Helen was sick again, there would be someone else -to play with him and look after him. He thought gleefully, _won't Helen -be surprised_, and darted off across the clearing. - - * * * * * - -Helen woke, roused not by a sound but by a silence. She no longer heard -Robin's soft breaths from the alcove, and after a moment she realized -something else: - -The winds were silent. - -Perhaps, she thought, a storm was coming. Some change in air pressure -could cause this stillness--but Robin? She tiptoed to the alcove; as -she had suspected, his bed was empty. - -Where could he be? In the clearing? With a storm coming? She slid her -feet into hand-made sandals and ran outside, her quivering call ringing -out through the silent forest: - -"Robin--oh, Robin!" - -Silence. And far away a little ominous whisper. And for the first -time, since that first frightening year of loneliness, she felt lost, -deserted in an alien world. She ran across the clearing, looking around -wildly, trying to decide which way he could have wandered. Into the -forest? What if he had strayed toward the river bank? There was a place -where the bank crumbled away, down toward the rapids--her throat closed -convulsively, and her call was almost a shriek: - -"Oh, Robin! Robin, darling! Robin!" - -She ran through the paths worn by their feet, hearing snatches of -rustle, winds and leaves suddenly vocal in the cold moonlight around -her. It was the first time since the spaceship left them that Helen had -ventured out into the night of their world. She called again, her voice -cracking in panic. - -"Ro-bin!" - -A sudden stray gleam revealed a glint of white, and a child stood in -the middle of the path. Helen gasped with relief and ran to snatch up -her son--then fell back in dismay. It was not Robin who stood there. -The child was naked, about a head shorter than Robin, and female. - -There was something curious about the bare and gleaming flesh, as if -she could see the child only in the full flush of the moonlight. A -round, almost expressionless face was surrounded by a mass of colorless -streaming hair, the exact color of the moonlight. Helen's audible gasp -startled her to a stop: she shut her eyes convulsively, and when she -opened them the path was black and empty and Robin was running down the -track toward her. - -Helen caught him up, with a strangled cry, and ran, clasping him to her -breast, back down the path to their shack. Inside, she barred the door -and laid Robin down in her own bed, and threw herself down shivering, -too shaken to speak, too shaken to scold him, curiously afraid to -question. I had a hallucination, she told herself, a hallucination, -another dream, a dream.... - - * * * * * - -A dream, like the other Dream. She dignified it to herself as The -Dream, because it was not like any other dream she had ever had. She -had dreamed it first before Robin's birth, and been ashamed to speak of -it to Chao Lin, fearing the common-sense skepticism of the older woman. - -On their tenth night on the green planet (the _Starholm_ was a dim -recollection now) when Merrihew's scientists had been convinced that -the little world was safe, without wild beasts or diseases or savage -natives, the crew had requested permission to camp in the valley -clearing beside the river. Permission granted, they had gone apart in -couples almost as usual, and even those who had no enduring liaison at -the moment had found a partner for the night. - -_It must have been that night...._ - -Colin Reynolds was two years younger than Helen, and their attachment, -enduring over a few months of shiptime, was based less on mutual -passion than a sort of boyish need in him, a sort of impersonal -feminine solicitude in Helen. All her affairs had been like that, -companionable, comfortable, but never passionate. Curiously enough, -Helen was a woman capable of passion, of great depths of devotion; but -no man had ever roused it and now no man ever would. Only Robin's birth -had touched her deeply-pent emotions. - -But that night, when Colin Reynolds was sleeping, Helen stayed -restlessly awake, hearing the unquiet stirring of wind on the leaves. -After a time she wandered down to the water's edge, staying a cautious -distance from the shore--for the cliff crumbled dangerously--and -stretched herself out to listen to the wind-voices. And after a time -she fell asleep, and had The Dream, which was to return to her again -and again. - -Helen thought of herself as a scientist, without room for fantasies, -and that was why she called it, fiercely, a dream; a dream born of some -undiagnosed conflict in her. Even to herself Helen would not recall it -in full. - -There had been a man, and to her it seemed that he was part of the -green and windy world, and he had found her sleeping by the river. Even -in her drowsy state, Helen had suspected that perhaps one of the other -crew members, like herself sleepless and drawn to the shining water, -had happened upon her there; such things were not impossible, manners -and mores being what they were among starship crews. - -But to her, half-dreaming, there had been some strangeness about him, -which prevented her from seeing him too clearly even in the brilliant -green moonlight. No dream and no man had ever seemed so living to her; -and it was her fierce rationalization of the dream which kept her -silent, months later, when she discovered (to her horror and secret -despair) that she was with child. She had felt that she would lose the -haze and secret delight of the dream, if she openly acknowledged that -Colin had fathered her child. - -But at first--in the cool green morning that followed--she had not been -at all sure it was a dream. Seeing only sunlight and leaves, she had -held back from speaking, not wanting ridicule; could she have asked -each man of the _Starholm_, Was it you who came to me last night? -Because if it was not, there are other men on this world, men who -cannot be clearly seen even by moonlight-- - -Severely she reminded herself, Merrihew's men had pronounced the world -uninhabited, and uninhabited it must be. Five years later, hugging -her sleeping son close, Helen remembered the dream, examined the -content of her fantasy, and once again, shivering, repeated, "I had a -hallucination. It was only a dream. A dream, because I was alone...." - - * * * * * - -When Robin was fourteen years old, Helen told him the story of his -birth, and of the ship. - -He was a tall, silent boy, strong and hardy but not talkative; he -heard the story almost in silence, and looked at Helen for a long time -in silence, afterward. He finally said in a whisper, "You could have -died--you gave up a lot for me, Helen, didn't you?" He knelt and took -her face in his hands. She smiled, and drew a little away from him. - -"Why are you looking at me like that, Robin?" - -The boy could not put instant words to his thoughts; emotions were not -in his vocabulary. Helen had taught him everything she knew, but she -had always concealed her feelings from her son. He asked at last, "Why -didn't my father stay with you?" - -"I don't suppose it entered his head," Helen said. "He was needed on -the ship. Losing me was bad enough." - -Robin said passionately, "I'd have stayed!" - -The woman found herself laughing. "Well--you did stay, Robin." - -He asked, "Am I like my father?" - -Helen looked gravely at her son, trying to see the half-forgotten -features of young Reynolds in the boy's face. No, Robin did not look -like Colin Reynolds, nor like Helen herself. She picked up his hand -in hers; despite his robust health, Robin never tanned; his skin was -pearly pale, so that in the green sunlight it blended into the forest -almost invisibly. His hand lay in Helen's palm like a shadow. She -said at last, "No, nothing like him. But under this sun, that's to be -expected." - -Robin said confidently, "I'm like the _other_ people." - -"The ones on the ship? They--" - -"No," Robin interrupted, "you always said, when I was older you'd tell -me about the other people. I mean the other people _here_. The ones in -the woods. The ones you can't see." - -Helen stared at the boy in blank disbelief. "What do you mean? There -are no other people, just us." Then she recalled that every imaginative -child invents playmates. _Alone_, she thought, _Robin's always alone, -no other children, no wonder he's a little--strange._ She said, -quietly, "You dreamed it, Robin." - -The boy only stared at her, in bleak, blank alienation. "You mean," he -said, "you can't _hear_ them either?" He got up and walked out of the -hut. Helen called, but he didn't turn back. She ran after him, catching -at his arm, stopping him almost by force. She whispered, "Robin, Robin, -tell me what you mean! There isn't anyone here. Once or twice I thought -I had seen--something, by moonlight, only it was a dream. Please, -Robin--please--" - -"If it's only a dream, why are you frightened?" Robin asked, through a -curious constriction in his throat. "If they've never hurt you--" - -No, they had never hurt her. Even if, in her long-ago dream, one of -them had come to her--_and the sons of God saw the daughters of men -that they were fair_--a scrap of memory from a vanished life on another -world sang in Helen's thoughts. She looked up at the pale, impatient -face of her son, and swallowed hard. - -Her voice was husky when she spoke. - -"Did I ever tell you about rationalization--when you want something to -be true so much that you can make it sound right to yourself?" - -"Couldn't that also happen to something you wanted _not_ to be true?" -Robin retorted with a mutinous curl of his mouth. - -Helen would not let go his arm. She begged, "Robin--no, you'll only -waste your life and break your heart looking for something that doesn't -exist--" - -The boy looked down into her shaken face, and suddenly a new emotion -welled up in him and he dropped to his knees beside her and buried his -face against her breast. He whispered, "Helen, I'll never leave you, -I'll never do anything you don't want me to do, I don't want anyone but -you--" - -And for the first time in many years, Helen broke into wild and -uncontrollable crying, without knowing why she wept. - -Robin did not speak again of his quest in the forest. For many months -he was quiet and subdued, staying near the clearing, hovering near -Helen for days at a time, then disappearing into the forest at dusk. He -heard the winds numbly, deaf to their promise and their call. - -Helen too was quiet and withdrawn, feeling Robin's alienation through -his submissive mood. She found herself speaking to him sharply for -being always under foot; yet, on the rare days when he vanished into -the forest and did not return until after sunset, she felt a restless -unease that set her wandering the paths herself, not following him, but -simply uneasy unless she knew he was within call. - -Once, in the shadows just before sunset, she thought she saw a man -moving through the trees, and for an instant, as he turned toward her, -she saw that he was naked. She had seen him only for a second or two, -and after he had slipped between the shadows again, common sense told -her it was Robin. She was vaguely shocked and annoyed; she firmly -intended to speak to him, perhaps to scold him for running about naked -and slipping away like that; then, in a sort of remote embarrassment, -she fore-bore to mention it. But after that, she kept out of the forest. - -Robin had been vaguely aware of her surveillance and knew when it -ceased. But he did not give up his own pointless rambles, although -even to himself he no longer spoke of searching, or of any dreamlike -inhabitants of the woods. At times it still seemed that some shadow -concealed a half-seen form, and the distant murmur grew into a voice -that mocked him; a white arm, the shadow of a face, until he lifted his -head and stared straight at it. - -One evening toward twilight he saw a sudden shimmer in the trees, -and he stood, fixedly, as the stray glint resolved itself first into -a white face with shadowy eyes, then into a translucent flicker of -bare arms, and then into the form of a woman, arrested for an instant -with her hand on the bole of a tree. In the shadowy spot, filled only -with the last ray of a cloudy sunset, she was very clear; not cloudy -or unreal, but so distinct that he could see even a small smudge or -bramble-scratch on her shoulder, and a fallen leaf tangled in her -colorless hair. Robin, paralyzed, watched her pause, and turn, and -smile, and then she melted into the shadows. - -He stood with his heart pounding for a second after she had gone; then -whirled, bursting with the excitement of his discovery, and ran down -the path toward home. Suddenly he stopped short, the world tilting and -reeling, and fell on his face in a bed of dry leaves. - -He was still ignorant of the nature of the emotion in him. He felt only -intolerable misery and the conviction that he must never, never speak -to Helen of what he had seen or felt. - - * * * * * - -He lay there, his burning face pressed into the leaves, unaware of the -rising wind, the little flurry of blown leaves, the growing darkness -and distant thunder. At last an icy spatter of rain aroused him, and -cold, numbed, he made his way slowly homeward. Over his head the boughs -creaked woodenly, and Robin, under the driving whips of the rain, felt -their tumult only echoed his own voiceless agony. - -He was drenched by the time he pushed the door of the shack open, and -stumbled blindly toward the fire, only hoping that Helen would be -sleeping. But she started up from beside the hearth they had built -together last summer. - -"Robin?" - -Deathly weary, the boy snapped, "Who _else_ would it be?" - -Helen didn't answer. She came to him, a small swift-moving figure in -the firelight, and drew him into the warmth. She said, almost humbly, -"I was afraid--the storm--Robin, you're all wet, come to the fire and -dry out." - -Robin yielded, his twitching nerves partly soothed by her voice. _How -tiny Helen is_, he thought, _and I can remember that she used to carry -me around on one arm. Now she hardly comes to my shoulder._ She brought -him food and he ate wolfishly, listening to the steady pouring rain, -uncomfortable under Helen's watching eyes. Before his own eyes there -was the clear memory of the woman in the wood, and so vivid was Robin's -imagination, heightened by loneliness and undiluted by any random -impressions, that it seemed to him Helen must see her too. And when she -came to stand beside him, the picture grew so keen in his thoughts that -he actually pulled himself free of her. - -The next day dawned gray and still, beaten with long needles of rain. -They stayed indoors by the smoldering fire; Robin, half sick and -feverish from his drenching, sprawled by the hearth too indolent to -move, watching Helen's comings and goings about the room; not realizing -why the sight of her slight, quick form against the gray light filled -him with such pain and melancholy. - -The storm lasted four days. Helen exhausted her household tasks and sat -restlessly thumbing through the few books she knew by heart--they had -allowed her to remove all her personal possessions, all the things she -had chosen on a forgotten and faraway Earth for a ten-year star-cruise. -For the first time in years, Helen was thinking again of the life, -the civilization she had thrown away, for Robin who had been a pink -scrap in the circle of her arm and now lay sullen on the hearth, not -speaking, aimlessly whittling a stick with the knife (found discarded -in a heap of rubbish from the _Starholm_) which was his dearest -possession. Helen felt slow horror closing in on her. _What world, -what heritage did I give him, in my madness? This world has driven us -both insane. Robin and I are both a little mad, by Earth's standards. -And when I die, and I will die first, what then?_ At that moment Helen -would have given her life to believe in his old dream of strange people -in the wood. - -She flung her book restlessly away, and Robin, as if waiting for that -signal, sat upright and said almost eagerly, "Helen--" - -Grateful that he had broken the silence of days, she gave him an -encouraging smile. - -"I've been reading your books," he began, diffidently, "and I -read about the sun you came from. It's different from this one. -Suppose--suppose, if there were actually a kind of people here, and -something in this light, or in your eyes, made them invisible to you?" - -Helen said, "Have you been seeing them again?" - -He flinched at her ironical tone, and she asked, somewhat more gently, -"It's a theory, Robin, but it wouldn't explain, then, why _you_ see -them." - -"Maybe I'm--more used to this light," he said gropingly. "--And anyway, -you said you thought you'd seen them and thought it was only a dream." - -Halfway between exasperation and a deep pity, Helen found herself -arguing, "If these other people of yours really exist, why haven't they -made themselves known in sixteen years?" - -The eagerness with which he answered was almost frightening. "I think -they only come out at night, they're what your book calls a primitive -civilization--" He spoke the words he had read, but never heard, with -an odd hesitation. "They're not really a civilization at all, I think, -they're like--part of the woods." - -"A forest people," Helen mused, impressed in spite of herself, "and -nocturnal. It's always moonlight or dusky when you see them--" - -"Then you _do_ believe me--oh, Helen," Robin cried, and suddenly found -himself pouring out the story of what he had seen, in incoherent -words, concluding "--and by daylight I can hear them, but I can't see -them--Helen, Helen, you have to believe it now, you'll have to let me -try to find them and learn to talk to them--" - -Helen listened with a sinking heart. She knew they should not discuss -it now, when five days of enforced housebound proximity had set their -nerves and tempers on edge, but some unknown tension hurled her sharp -words at Robin. "You saw a woman, and I--a man. These things are only -dreams. Do I have to explain more to you?" - -Robin flung his knife sullenly aside. "You're so blind, so stubborn--" - -"I think you are feverish again." Helen rose to go. - -He said wrathfully, "You treat me like a child!" - -"Because you act like one, with your fairy tales of women in the -wind...." - -Suddenly Robin's agony overflowed and he caught at her, holding her -around the knees, clinging to her as he had not done since he was a -small child, his words stumbling and rushing over one another. - -"Helen, Helen darling, don't be angry with me," he begged, and caught -her in a blind embrace that pulled her off her feet. She had never -guessed how strong he was; but he seemed very like a little boy, and -she hugged him quickly as he began to cover her face with childish -kisses. - -"Don't cry, Robin, my baby, it's all right," she murmured, kneeling -close to him. Gradually the wildness of his passionate crying abated; -she touched his forehead with her cheek to see if it were heated with -fever, and he reached up and held her there. Helen let him lie against -her shoulder, feeling that perhaps after the violence of his outburst -he would fall asleep, and she was half asleep herself when a sudden -shock of realization darted through her; quickly she tried to free -herself from Robin's entangling arms. - -"Robin, let me go." - -He clung to her, not understanding. "Don't let go of me, Helen. -Darling, stay here beside me," he begged, and pressed a kiss into her -throat. - -Helen, her blood icing over, realized that unless she freed herself -very quickly now, she would be fighting against a strong, aroused young -man not clearly aware of what he was doing. She took refuge in the -sharp maternal note of ten years ago, almost vanished in the closer, -more equal companionship of the time between: - -"No, Robin. Stop it, at once, do you hear?" - -Automatically he let her go, and she rolled quickly away, out of his -reach, and got to her feet. Robin, too intelligent to be unaware of her -anger and too naive to know its cause, suddenly dropped his head and -wept, wholly unstrung. "Why are you angry?" he blurted out. "I was only -loving you." - -And at the phrase of the five-year-old child, Helen felt her throat -would burst with its ache. She managed to choke out, "I'm not angry, -Robin--we'll talk about this later, I promise--" and then, her own -control vanishing, turned and fled precipitately into the pouring rain. - -She plunged through the familiar woods for a long time, in a daze of -unthinking misery. She did not even fully realize that she was sobbing -and muttering aloud, "No, no, no, no--" - -She must have wandered for several hours. The rain had stopped and the -darkness was lifting before she began to grow calmer and to think more -clearly. - -She had been blind, not to foresee this day when Robin was a child; -only if her child had been a daughter could it have been avoided. -Or--she was shocked at the hysterical sound of her own laughter--if -Colin had stayed and they had raised a family like Adam and Eve! - -But what now? Robin was sixteen; she was not yet forty. Helen caught at -vanishing memories of society; taboos so deeply rooted that for Helen -they were instinctual and impregnable. Yet for Robin nothing existed -except this little patch of forest and Helen herself--the only person -in his world, more specifically at the moment the only woman in his -world. _So much_, she thought bitterly, _for instinct. But have I the -right to begin this all over again? Worse; have I the right to deny its -existence and when I die, leave Robin alone?_ - -She had stumbled and paused for breath, realizing that she had -wandered in circles and that she was at a familiar point on the river -bank which she had avoided for sixteen years. On the heels of this -realization she became aware that for only the second time in memory, -the winds were wholly stilled. - - * * * * * - -Her eyes, swollen with crying, ached as she tried to pierce the gloom -of the mist, lilac-tinted with the approaching sunrise, which hung -around the water. Through the dispersing mist she made out, dimly, the -form of a man. - -He was tall, and his pale skin shone with misty white colors. Helen sat -frozen, her mouth open, and for the space of several seconds he looked -down at her without moving. His eyes, dark splashes in the pale face, -had an air of infinite sadness and compassion, and she thought his lips -moved in speech, but she heard only a thin familiar rustle of wind. - -Behind him, mere flickers, she seemed to make out the ghosts of other -faces, tips of fingers of invisible hands, eyes, the outline of a -woman's breast, the curve of a child's foot. For a minute, in Helen's -weary numbed state, all her defenses went down and she thought: _Then -I'm not mad and it wasn't a dream and Robin isn't Reynolds' son at all. -His father was this--one of these--and they've been watching me and -Robin, Robin has seen them, he doesn't know he's one of them, but they -know. They know and I've kept Robin from them all these sixteen years._ - -The man took two steps toward her, the translucent body shifting -to a dozen colors before her blurred eyes. His face had a curious -familiarity--_familiarity_--and in a sudden spasm of terror Helen -thought, "I'm going mad, it's Robin, _it's Robin_--" - - * * * * * - -His hand was actually outstretched to touch her when her scream cut icy -lashes through the forest, stirring wild echoes in the wind-voices, and -she whirled and ran blindly toward the treacherous, crumbling bank. -Behind her came steps, a voice, a cry--Robin, the strange dryad-man, -she could not guess. The horror of incest, the son the father the lover -suddenly melting into one, overwhelmed her reeling brain and she fled -insanely to the brink. She felt a masculine hand actually gripping her -shoulder, she might have been pulled back even then, but she twisted -free blindly, shrieking, "No, Robin, no, no--" and flung herself down -the steep bank, to slip and hurl downward and whirl around in the -raging current to spinning oblivion and death.... - - * * * * * - -Many years later, Merrihew, grown old in the Space Service, falsified -a log entry to send his ship for a little while into the orbit of the -tiny green planet he had named Robin's World. The old buildings had -fallen into rotted timbers, and Merrihew quartered the little world for -two months from pole to pole but found nothing. Nothing but shadows and -whispers and the unending voices of the wind. Finally, he lifted his -ship and went away. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Wind People, by Marion Zimmer Bradley - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIND PEOPLE *** - -***** This file should be named 60640.txt or 60640.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/6/4/60640/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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